September 2008 Features

The house sits at the end of a poorly kept dirt road in a neighborhood with no visible street signs. The gate is locked and I can hear several dogs barking behind it. It’s growing dark and I start to wonder if I am even in the right place. As the dusk turns to outright [...]

The View From Ipanema “This is close to where Rickson Gracie had the famous fi ght with Hugo Duarte,” Master Ricardo Murgel tells me as we jog along Ipanema beach after a morning workout. Murgel is that rarest of creatures, a Brazilian with a correct sense of punctuality. He meets me every morning at 8:00 [...]

I returned from an eight-day NFL Pro Bowl trip, checked out my house, which I believed had been vacant following a raucous Super Bowl stint, and suddenly felt I was Kato Kaelin-ized. I opened the door to the master guest room in my house and there, laid out on the fl oor, were the belongings [...]